


Tom Curry's Guide to Drunkenly Realising That Your Captain is in a Secretly Gay Relationship with your Hooker

by orphan_account, Prop_Logic



Category: Rugby RPF, Rugby Union RPF
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Secret Relationship, Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28114455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prop_Logic/pseuds/Prop_Logic
Summary: Tom reaches a startling realisation in the middle of Jamie George's stag-do and has absolutely no idea how to deal with it.
Relationships: Jamie George/Owen Farrell
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	Tom Curry's Guide to Drunkenly Realising That Your Captain is in a Secretly Gay Relationship with your Hooker

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I was watching some rugby this afternoon, ended up wanting to write something... So I wrote this. It's not long, just meant to be a bit of fun (a bit like the Christmas tree my brother and I put up the other day, which - eh... suffice to say that it has a certain decorative piece attached to it that rather deliberately resembles a piece of human anatomy. Our parents have yet to remove it). The title is... I don't even know; I wrote it about three seconds ago to be far too long for its purpose but also very much to the point.
> 
> At any rate, this is set post-ANC Final, when Jamie George's stag-do apparently took place.

In hindsight, it probably should have been obvious from the start, only it wasn’t, because absolutely no one had any reason to read the signs for what they were. For every clue pointing in the direction of the truth like a flashing neon arrow – well, maybe somewhat more subtly than _that_ , for all it feels so clear now – there was another suggestion of a completely different state of affairs; even if _most_ of those came down to some variation of societal expectation, Tom thinks that both he and the rest of the team were bloody well justified in not assuming that their teammates’ relationships would turn out to be some kind of elaborate façade.

The honest-to-God worst part is that it _still_ doesn’t stop everything from being insultingly transparent now that Tom knows what he is looking for.

How many times have the pair of them arrived in camp together, left together, made plans for dinner and grocery shopping over breaks in front of the team together? And yet it never occurred to Tom, nor anyone in the England squad besides their clubmates, that they were living together; why wouldn’t two players living close together arrange shopping trips in coordination with one another? It makes perfect sense.

Only it doesn’t, and Tom doesn’t know why he never realised that, if it were anyone else, he’d think it was _weird_ (which he is, of course, an expert on).

Never mind that, though. They link up on the field all the time, in training and in games; they run lines off and offload to each other, and chase down one another’s kicks – and that is definitely not normal when Tom thinks about it, because they should not end up attacking in tandem that often by coincidence. Then they defend together, too, and again Tom has no excuses for why they so regularly line up next to each other, and…

Tom’s head hurts.

“Alright, mate?” Sam asks, clapping him heavily on the shoulder, and Tom knows that his nod is not convincing in the slightest, least of all because he is still staring miserably into the distance. “What’s up? I know the game wasn’t all great, but we won, yeah? Save the analysis for tomorrow.”

“It’s not _that_ ,” Tom groans, burying his face in his hands for a moment before he has to peek through his fingers to make sure that he can still watch the sources of his vexation out of the corner of his eye. “ _Why did no one fucking_ notice?”

He can’t see Sam, but the older man’s awkward hesitation makes the confusion that his words have caused clear. Obviously, he isn’t making sense – but then he didn’t really mean to, because he doesn’t know if he is meant to tell anyone about what he has realised, or just keep very, determinedly quiet about it.

“Notice what?” Sam prompts him, definitely concerned.

Dropping his hands from his face, Tom waves them vaguely in the direction of their teammates – but not too accurately, of course.

“ _Them_!” he exclaims, frustrated. “They – They – They’re not even _hiding_ it!”

And that really is the worst of it. The pair of them have not once, at least that Tom is aware of, made any explicit attempt to hide it; they have just let their admittedly sturdy and somewhat inscrutable covers of having _female partners_ protect them from anyone reading the truth of the situation into pretty much every single thing they ever do.

“Er…” Sam squints across the room. “The beer? Because I’m fairly sure everyone’s noticed it.”

It is too much. Tom can’t not say anything, even if he keeps their names out of it.

“No,” he grumbles, lowering his voice to hiss, “The gay relationship going on between two of our teammates!”

For a moment, Sam stares at him in wide-eyed, dumbfounded shock, then the older man glances hurriedly around the room and, as his gaze turns back to Tom, disbelief and bemusement cloud his features.

“Mate, did someone spike your drink?” he checks, reaching over to take Tom’s beer and sniff it carefully. “No one in the team’s dating each other.”

Tom very forcefully does not let his eyes wander towards where one man’s legs are slung over another’s, their shoulders pressed together, their heads tilted inwards, or to any of the faces of their watching clubmates. Having grown up playing rugby for pretty much his entire life, Tom knows exactly the kind of expressions people make when they want to tease their friends for something not actually _embarrassing_ , so much, but just too cute or sappy to get away with.

The fact that said clubmates are clearly all saving up for when the rest of the squad isn’t around only makes Tom feel more certain that he shouldn’t say anything, but the two of them just aren’t making any attempt to hide it.

“Lads, why haven’t we got any strippers in for Jinxie’s stag?” Ben Youngs, clearly highly inebriated, shouts over the noises bouncing through the rest of the room, and someone whoops.

“Mate, I don’t need strippers!” Jamie George yells right back from where he sits with his arm wrapped tightly around their Captain’s waist – _not his shoulders_ , Tom thinks somewhat hysterically, _but his waist, and no one has noticed because that’s_ normal _for them_ – and a bottle of something that looks a good deal stronger than beer in his hands. “I’ve got Faz right here!”

His hand shifts down, smacking Owen solidly on the arse as the boys cheer and laugh, and Owen pulls a face, leaning in to close what little gap remains between them and whisper into Jamie’s ear. Jamie pats his thigh twice more – a lot more gently, as if in apology – then resettles his hand at Owen’s waist as he replies.

“I know they’re good friends,” Sam remarks, frowning, and Tom thinks, for just a moment, that maybe his backrow partner has caught on, “But I’m not sure that joke was great taste, you know? Faz is tough, but we all know he’s not happy with his kicking today.”

Dropping his face back into his hands, Tom resists the urge to scream.

“I’m serious,” Sam insists. “I don’t have anything against well-meaning banter – you know that. But Faz seems like he’s really beating himself up at the moment, and it’s not even like most of his game was at all _bad_ –”

“I know, I know,” Tom assures him, voice muffled by sticky palms. “We can check on Owen later, alright?”

 _If Owen ever detaches himself from his – what?_ Given that Owen is supposedly married to a woman and Jamie’s stag-do is meant to be tonight, Tom has absolutely no idea what could be up between them. _Boyfriend? Fiancé?_ Husband _?_

What would really be nice right now, Tom decides, is a lie-down. Unfortunately, it has now struck him that maybe the other relationships that Owen and Jamie claim to have might not be so farcical as he first thought; there is, after all, that poly… poly… polyamorous thing? Or maybe, as far as their other partners are concerned, everything is fine and normal, and Owen and Jamie are _cheating_ on them?

Is Tom now an accessory to cheating? Can you _be_ an accessory to something that isn’t actually a crime? (Or is it?)

No, Tom doesn’t think either of them are the type to cheat, but that doesn’t do much to narrow down what is actually going on, when it could well be the case that either Owen’s marriage or Jamie’s engagement is genuine – or both – but equally the possibility that they are just covers for the two of them cannot be ruled out.

Tom isn’t even going to get into why they might feel the need to go to such lengths to hide it; rugby might be an accepting sport, but Tom knows that it still has a long way to go, and who knows what it was like when Owen and Jamie were emerging into the world of professional sport?

The only thing for it, Tom decides eventually, is to talk to Owen and Jamie. He doesn’t feel right about the prospect of knowing what could be a very big and important secret of theirs and not admitting to it. What if it isn’t meant to be a secret, though, and Tom makes everyone feel very awkward by confessing to knowing something that they never meant to hide? Even worse, what if he has made it all up in his head? God, then he could end up suggesting something that might offend them _and_ their partners – and on the night of Jamie’s stag-do as well.

_The only approach_ , Tom finally realises, when it is getting on towards Monday morning, long after he has stopped taking more than the smallest sips of beer and has, to a degree, sobered up while lurking in the corner of the room, _is to ask them if they’re dating. Not tell them I_ know _they are – just ask if it’s true._

Hopefully, that will keep any bad reactions to a minimum, at least.

Unfortunately, by the time Tom has reached that decision, Jamie and Owen have both mysteriously disappeared.

 _Fuck_.

Well, if they have disappeared – and Tom doesn’t want to think about _why_ , not because he has anything against it but because he doesn’t want to think about _any_ of his teammates like that – then there is absolutely nothing to stop him from heading off for that piss he has been desperate for since quarter to midnight. With a sigh, he starts to lever himself upright, then pauses expectantly as Sam shifts towards him, only to realise that the man has fallen asleep on his shoulder.

Far more carefully, he extracts himself the rest of the way and lays Sam down on the couch they were sharing, hoping for the other flanker’s sake that Sam’s neck will forgive him eventually. Escape mission complete, he stumbles off in the direction of the nearest set of toilets, apparently with more alcohol still in his system than he realised – or maybe it is just the exhaustion setting in, in which case a little wander may be just the thing he needs.

The worst bit about this stag-do business, he realises distantly, is that most of the Saracens boys have a confirmation that they can definitely take a few days off and can afford to go a lot harder than the rest of them – but of course no one is going to back down from that kind of challenge. The rest of them have therefore found themselves strung along in the wake of the Sarries lads, and there will be a lot of regret to go around in the coming week.

Dazedly, he gropes for the door handle and pushes open, trudging inside and only stopping at the sound of a familiar voice.

“ _Shit_!”

When he looks up, it is to Owen scrambling for his shirt and shoving Jamie’s towards the man in question, the pair of them clearly as unsteady on their feet as Tom feels. Has Tom walked in on – Were they really…?

“Sorry, sorry!” Tom squeaks, instinct driving him to shove the door closed but not, unfortunately, to remember to place himself on the other side first; belatedly, he covers his eyes even though he isn’t actually seeing anything he hasn’t already. “…A toilet? Really? Someone who didn’t know could have walked in!”

“Er…” is Owen’s intelligent reply, the Captain clearly still struggling to cope with the shock of Tom walking in.

Slowly, Tom lowers his hand to find Jamie splashing his face with water, likely in an attempt to sober up – _or calm himself down_ , shit, Tom did not want to think about that – as Owen tries to work out which way around his shirt is meant to go. Tom can empathise; they’re tricky bastards without the added influence of exhaustion and alcohol.

“Didn’t know _you_ knew,” Jamie fills in for the both of them, pausing briefly in his face-splashing to look Tom warily up and down with all the self-confident ineptitude of a very drunk man.

“I realised today?” Tom offers nervously. “I was, um… I was going to tell you – later, actually.”

For a moment, silence drifts through the room, then Tom remembers what else he needs to say.

“I haven’t told anyone,” he assures them hastily. “But, like – what’s with the stag-do, and the…” he waves a hand awkwardly in Owen’s direction, “…wife, and… the kid…? Are you poly-whatever-it-is, or…?”

Jamie and Owen share a glance, and Owen pulls a face that actually seems somewhat impressed, to Tom’s weary eyes.

“No,” the flyhalf tells him all the same. “It’s… Surprised you know about that sorta thing, but… No, Georgie’s just a friend.”

“And Katie,” Jamie agrees. “We’re all just gay friends. ‘Cept for me and Owen, obviously.”

That explains a lot. It hadn’t even occurred to Tom that their female ‘partners’ might be lesbians, actually, though he doesn’t know why not – another one of those _obvious in hindsight_ things, he supposes.

“Right,” he coughs, suddenly realising that he is standing around in a hotel toilet, talking to his drunk senior teammates about the intricacies of their relationship and the work that they have put into not being outed; Owen still has yet to put his shirt on, apparently having given up on trying to work out which way around it should go for the time being. “I’ll… leave you to it, then…?”

“Nah,” Jamie dismisses at once, grinning sheepishly. “We’ll find somewhere more private. You do what you’ve gotta do, Curry.”

It takes Tom a moment to realise that he should step aside to let them out, which he does with no small level of bewilderment. This isn’t at all how he expected this conversation to go. It is both more and much less awkward than his original plan and he doesn’t know which he would have preferred if given the choice.

“Congratulations, Tom,” Owen tells him on the way out, fully clothed once more as he pats Tom’s shoulder. “First man in the squad to realise.”

Tom gapes at his Captain for a moment, then finds his voice as Owen reaches for – and, clearly still much more inebriated than Tom has ever seen him before, misses – the door handle.

“Wait –” he blurts out, then swallows when both Owen and Jamie turn to him expectantly. “Am I – Should I keep quiet about this? Or…?”

The two older men share another glance, then Jamie sighs audibly through his nose, lifting a shoulder.

“We don’t want it getting out to the public,” Owen says firmly. “Maybe not ever. That’s not – Jinx wouldn’t be getting married if we… Well, that’s the public. If the boys can keep it a secret…”

“We don’t mind,” Jamie admits, and Tom takes a moment to admire his – and Owen’s – ability to talk fairly normally despite his clear lack of coordination. “We’re not going out of our way to say anything, but we won’t be too bothered if news travels – their faults for not realising and all… But the Sarries lads think it’s fun to stay quiet and wait, at least.”

“They’ve only been keeping on at it for five years or thereabouts,” Owen agrees dryly, to a snort from Jamie before the two disappear.

For a moment, there is nothing Tom can do but stare at the closing door that they leave in their wake, before he remembers – he really, _desperately_ , needs a piss.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope everyone's well, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
